Custom software for small municipal and cooperative utilities

What a small utility office deals with

A utility serving a few hundred to a few thousand connections often has two or three people in the office and a small field crew. They do the same jobs as a big utility, from meter reading to shutoffs to board reports, without the IT department.

• Meter reads come from handhelds, drive-by radio reads, a fixed network or a clipboard, and have to be checked for high, low and zero reads before billing.
• Rate structures have base charges, tiers, minimums, sewer based on water use, seasonal or winter averaging, and separate rates inside and outside town limits.
• Late fees, delinquency notices, door hangers and disconnections follow local ordinances and state rules, with exceptions for medical needs or weather.
• Move-ins, move-outs, deposits and final bills happen at the counter and over the phone every day.
• Field work orders for leaks, rereads, locates, backflow tests and meter changes are on paper.
• Boil water notices, planned outages and storm updates need to reach customers fast.
• Cooperatives also track members, capital credits, elections and annual meetings.

Utilities software we build: billing, field work and portals

Some utilities want a full custom system. More often they keep their billing core and add the pieces it lacks. Common builds include:

• Utility billing with your rate tables, billing cycles, adjustments, deposits and final bills, or add-ons to the billing system you have.
• Meter read import and validation from your handhelds or AMR and AMI system, with exception lists before bills go out.
• A customer portal and app to view usage, pay bills, set up autopay, start or stop service and report problems.
• A field work order app for leaks, rereads, disconnects, reconnects, meter changes and backflow tests, with photos and GPS.
• Delinquency workflows that follow your ordinance: notice dates, door hanger lists, shutoff lists and reconnect fees.
• Mass notices by text, email and voice for boil water advisories, outages and main breaks, targeted by street or zone.
• Member management for co-ops: membership, capital credit allocations and retirements, and board election support.
• Utility management software for assets: hydrants, valves, mains, lift stations and maintenance history.
• Integrations with your accounting or general ledger, payment processor, meter system and GIS.

Packaged utility software vs. custom

Most small utilities already use a packaged system, and that is often right for core billing. Tyler Technologies sells utility billing as part of a larger set of local government software. Caselle serves many small cities and districts with accounting and utility billing. NISC provides billing and operations software for many electric and telecom cooperatives. These vendors know utility accounting well and handle the yearly updates.

Custom software helps around those systems: a better customer portal, a field app your crew will actually use, notices targeted by street, a read validation step that catches problems before bills mail, or tools for a special case like a water district that bills irrigation separately. For a very small utility still on an old desktop program or a spreadsheet, a fully custom billing system can also be the simpler route. Data rules apply either way: utilities hold customer payment details and personal information, so security and access controls are built in from the start.

How a utility software project works

1. Learn your rulesWe go through your rate ordinance, billing calendar, delinquency process and board reporting with the clerk and the superintendent.
2. Map the systemsBilling, meters, payments, accounting and GIS are listed with what each can export or connect to.
3. Design the screensOffice staff click through the counter and portal screens, and the crew tries the field app on a phone.
4. Build in roundsPieces arrive in short rounds you review, starting with the one that saves the most staff time.
5. Test against real billsWe run past billing cycles through the new logic and check every result against the bills you already sent.
6. Go live between cyclesLaunch is timed right after a billing run, with your team supported through the first cycle on the new system.

Where AI helps a small utility

AI can answer routine calls and texts about balances, due dates and outages around the clock, flag unusual usage that may point to a leak, draft notices and board summaries from your data, and read paper forms like service applications into the system. Shutoff decisions, adjustments and anything involving a customer’s account balance are made by staff.